Local government

Provincial government

Local government was established in 1909 when the four former colonies became provinces. Each was governed by a white-elected provincial council with limited legislative powers. The administrator of each province was appointed by the central government and presided over an executive committee representing the majority party in the council. Provincial councils were abolished in 1986, and the executive committees, appointed by the president, became the administrative arms of the state in each province. By the late 1980s a small number of blacks, Coloureds, and Indians had been appointed to them.

Municipal government

Urban municipal government has developed unevenly in South Africa since the early 19th century. In the 20th century, intensified urban segregation was accompanied by the creation of councils that advised the administrators appointed by white governments to run black, Coloured, and Asian “locations” and “townships.” In most rural areas, white governments tried to incorporate indigenous hereditary leaders (“chiefs”) of local communities as the front line for governing blacks, although the Cape administration also set up a parallel system of appointed “headmen.”

Under the 1996 constitution, local government is predicated on a division of the entire country into municipalities. Executive and legislative authority is vested in municipal councils, some of which share authority with other municipalities. Chiefs remain important in rural governance. They generally work with appointed councils regarded by their supporters as traditional. Efforts by other blacks to reform and democratize rural administration and reduce the power of chiefs have become some of the most violently contentious issues in postapartheid politics.

Justice

The common law of the republic is based on Roman-Dutch law, the uncodified law of the Netherlands having been retained after the Cape’s cession to the United Kingdom in 1815. The judiciary comprises the Constitutional Court (with powers to decide on the constitutionality of legislative and administrative actions, particularly with respect to the bill of rights), the Supreme Court of Appeal (the highest court of appeal except in constitutional matters), the High Courts, and Magistrate’s Courts. Parliament may create additional courts but only with status equal to that of the High and Magistrate’s Courts. The Supreme Court is headed by a chief justice, who is appointed by the state president, as are the deputy chief justice and the chief justice and deputy chief justice of the Constitutional Court. Other judges are appointed by the president with the advice of the Judicial Service Commission.

Traditional authorities exercise some powers in relation to customary law, which derives from indigenous African practice codified in some areas (such as KwaZulu-Natal) by colonial rulers. Customary law continues to be recognized in various ways. For example, marriage in South Africa takes place either under customary law or under statute law, with profound implications for the legal status of African women married under customary law. Most civil and criminal litigation is a matter for the Magistrate’s Courts.

Political process

All citizens 18 years of age and older have the right to vote. Prior to universal suffrage, introduced in 1994, blacks, Coloureds, and Asians (primarily Indians) were systematically deprived of political participation in the conduct of national and provincial affairs, with few exceptions. In the Cape Colony and, later, Cape of Good Hope province, a property-qualified franchise once allowed a minority of better-off Coloureds and blacks to vote (rights eventually abolished under apartheid). Black representation in Parliament—provided by a small number of elected white representatives—was abolished in 1959, on the theory that blacks would eventually find their political rights as citizens of the “homelands” that would eventually become independent. Coloureds, who had been on a common voting roll with whites, were forced into separate representation in Parliament in 1956, and that arrangement was abolished altogether in 1968.

The 1984 constitution extended the franchise to Coloureds and Asians in segregated houses of Parliament, but the substance of power in most matters, particularly over the general policy of apartheid, remained with the house representing whites. Blacks continued to be excluded from the national government.

White women gained the right to vote in 1930; other women did not gain that right until universal suffrage was introduced in 1994. Women have since made strides in attaining important government positions. At the beginning of the 21st century, they made up about one-third of the National Assembly, and by 2010 that figure had increased to more than two-fifths. In 2005 Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was appointed deputy president—the first woman named to that position.

The major political party is the African National Congress (ANC; founded 1912). Banned from 1960 until 1990, the ANC changed from a national liberation organization to a political party after it won a majority at national democratic elections held in 1994. The primary opposition party is the Democratic Alliance (DA; founded 2000). The heir to a long liberal tradition in white politics, the DA’s initial members included the former Democratic Party and Federal Alliance. The Independent Democrats party began the process of integrating with the DA in 2010. Other parties that have enjoyed significant support include the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), established in 2013 by former ANC members; the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a largely Zulu organization founded in 1975; the National Freedom Party, founded by a former IFP member in 2011; the United Democratic Movement, formed in 1997 by former officials of the ANC and the National Party; the Freedom Front Plus, a right-wing white party originally founded in 1994 as the Freedom Front that was joined by the Conservative Party of South Africa and Afrikaner Eenheid Beweging in 2003; the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), a group that broke away from the ANC in 1959; and the South African Communist Party (SACP), a longtime ally of the ANC in the fight against apartheid. The SACP typically enters its candidates on the ANC’s lists, as do the South African National Civic Organization and the trade union federation COSATU. Smaller parties that have won seats in legislative elections include Congress of the People (COPE), Agang SA, the African Christian Democratic Party, the African Independent Congress, the United Christian Democratic Party, the African People’s Convention, the Azanian People’s Organization, and the Minority Front.

A defunct party that played a decisive role in South Africa’s history was the National Party (NP), which ruled the country from 1948 to 1994. Founded in 1914 and supported by both Afrikaners and English-speaking white South Africans, the NP was long dedicated to policies of white supremacy and developed the apartheid system. By the early 1990s the NP, bowing to international pressure, had moved toward sharing power with the country’s black majority and was later defeated in 1994 in the country’s first multiracial elections. The party sought to recast its image by changing its name to the New National Party in December 1998, and it allied itself with the Democratic Party and the Federal Alliance in 2000 in an attempt to gain more political power. After several years of declining popularity, the party’s federal council voted to disband the party in 2005.

Security

South Africa has a large, well-equipped army, by far the largest contingent of the country’s armed forces. The navy has a small fleet consisting of frigates, submarines, minesweepers, small strike craft, and auxiliary vessels. The air force’s craft include fighter-bombers, interceptor fighters, helicopters, and reconnaissance, transport, and training aircraft.

The armed forces entered a period of transition in 1994. South Africa’s military traditionally had been white, with a small standing force and a large reserve component. However, from the 1970s an increasing number of black troops were recruited. Compulsory military service, formerly for white males only, ended in 1994. Guerrillas of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), and of the PAC’s military have been incorporated into a renamed South African National Defence Force. This integration has not been entirely smooth: ex-guerrillas have been perceived by many military professionals as lacking training and discipline, while the old-line white noncommissioned and commissioned officer corps has been perceived by some black soldiers as riddled with racism. A number of top officers under the old government were forced out in the 1990s as various apartheid-era abuses came to light, although concerns prior to the 1994 elections of possible rebellion by conservative military and police leaders have diminished.

During the apartheid period the South African government, through a network of private and government-controlled corporations led by the state-owned Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor), developed a variety of new weapons systems, mostly in order to overcome the effects of the international arms embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council in 1977. Nuclear weapons were developed in great secrecy—six atomic bombs were built during the 1970s and ’80s—but the nuclear weapons program was terminated in 1989, and the bombs were dismantled the following year by the NP government as the prospect of a black-led government became increasingly likely.

The regular police are organized nationally and comprise regulars as well as reservists. There have been about equal numbers of whites and nonwhites, reflecting a disproportionately high number of whites. Police responsibility for maintaining internal security brought them into sharp conflict with antiapartheid demonstrators during the 1970s and ’80s. The specialist security police gained power within the force during that time, while thousands of poorly trained and poorly disciplined auxiliary police were recruited. As political control increasingly took precedence over basic policing, black communities were often treated as enemies rather than as citizens to be protected. The police were granted immunity and extrajudicial powers under the states of emergency first declared in 1983, and their actions were widely seen as abusive, contributing to the growth of international pressure on South Africa’s government. Once the police had been freed of the burden of enforcing apartheid, they faced the challenge of forging better relationships with communities in the fight against rising crime levels.

In the late 1970s the daily average prison population was almost 100,000, one of the highest rates in the world. Of these, the majority were imprisoned for statutory offenses against the so-called pass laws, repealed in 1986, which restricted the right of blacks to live and work in white areas and which did not apply to other racial groups. Under the states of emergency declared at periods of peak conflict in the 1980s, as many as 50,000 persons were detained without charge or trial. The proportion of the population in prison then declined, many detainees being released in 1990 with the end of a state of emergency; negotiations for a new constitution also led to the release of many political prisoners. An amnesty policy was instituted, covering politically inspired offenses committed by both whites and nonwhites during the closing years of the struggle against apartheid, provided that offenders fully revealed their actions to a public commission. The prison population began to increase significantly in the mid-1990s, and in the early 21st century South Africa’s prison population rate was the highest in Africa and among the highest in the world.

Health and welfare

While racial bias was not explicitly written into health legislation during the apartheid period, medical care for South Africans invariably reflected the economic and political inequalities of the society, as well as the consequences of apartheid’s residential and administrative segregation and of deliberately unequal government health funding. Hospital segregation has ended, but access to medical services remains greatly inferior in historically black areas. The health status of blacks is generally low; malnutrition is perhaps the most important long-standing example, especially among rural children. There is an enormous discrepancy in infant mortality rates, which are lowest for whites and highest among rural blacks. Since 1994 both the Department of National Health and the administrations of the new provinces have emphasized primary health care delivery, building in some instances on programs that farsighted medical workers instituted during the apartheid period.

The number of South Africans infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, increased sharply during the 1990s, especially among blacks, and, at the beginning of the 21st century, South Africa ranked near the top of United Nations estimates of proportions of national populations infected with HIV. In 2010 the country launched an aggressive HIV/AIDS program, unprecedented in scope, that addressed prevention, testing, and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

A highly sophisticated public health system exists in the cities and large towns. Some of the largest public hospitals are linked to the university medical schools, but those located in the formerly segregated black areas tend to be overcrowded. Many of the more-expensive private hospitals are accessible only to those with higher incomes, still predominantly whites. Most regularly employed persons enjoy a degree of private medical insurance, but, because a high proportion of black adults are not in formal-sector employment, reliance on insurance through employers produces a racially skewed pattern of access. By contrast, private general practitioners and specialists supply most needs for the most affluent.

Government provides a number of welfare measures, among them small pensions for all citizens beyond retirement age whose incomes are below a minimal level. Large numbers of elderly blacks, and often their dependents, gain a minimal livelihood from this system. In the past, welfare systems were administered separately for the different racial groups; the value of pensions was greatest for whites, less for Indians and Coloureds (those of mixed ancestry), and lowest for blacks. During the late 1980s the differentials began to be reduced, and they were eliminated under the 1996 constitution.

The two most important features affecting social conditions in South Africa are the high unemployment rate for blacks and the wide disparity between black and white income levels. In the early 21st century, estimates of black unemployment were higher than the unemployment rates of the groups formerly classified under apartheid as Indians and Coloureds and significantly higher than the unemployment rate for whites. Blacks who were employed were generally in the lowest-paying and least-prestigious positions. This pattern partially reflected the composition of South Africa’s population, with its many migrants to industrial and urban areas, and also indicated how large the country’s informal economy had become. Substantial wage advances for miners and industrial workers since the 1970s have not been shared by the nonunionized or the underemployed. On the other hand, employment opportunities in government, the professions, and business have grown rapidly for blacks, Indians, and Coloureds, and since the early 1990s nonwhites have gradually occupied more midlevel positions.

Housing

Traditional housing varied according to ethnic group. The Nguni and the Swazi lived in dispersed households governed by chiefs, while the Sotho lived in villages and farmed on land outside the villages. The Xhosa built their houses near the tops of ridges that overlooked local rivers, and the Ndebele decorated their homesteads with colourful pictures and symbols. Zulu housing was centred around the imizi (kraal), which consisted of a fence that enclosed a number of beehive-shaped one-room houses.

Ndebele house with traditional artwork, South Africa.Tom Cockrem—age fotostock/Imagestate

Local authorities have been responsible for public housing since the 1920s, although control over black housing reverted to the central government in 1971. A housing shortage existed and was somewhat addressed through a massive program of township development in black areas begun in the 1950s but diminished in the 1970s. During the 1980s “site-and-service” schemes emerged to provide land equipped with basic infrastructure for poorer, usually black people around the cities to build upon, but the housing crisis remained severe in the face of rapid population growth and urban migration. Housing policy since the early 1990s has emphasized the joint roles of the public and private sectors; the government launched an ambitious program of capital subsidies and loan guarantees in an effort to upgrade housing conditions and assist all citizens in acquiring title to some form of shelter.

Education

Primary and secondary schools

School education is compulsory for all children between 7 and 16 years of age or through ninth grade, whichever is reached first, and begins in one of the 11 official languages. After second grade, students begin learning another language.

The right to a basic education is guaranteed in the constitution. The country has a national educational system, which oversees the education implemented in the provinces. The school system contains both private and public schools. During the apartheid era, schools run by white education departments had the best resources in the public school system, and white-oriented private schools received substantial public subsidies. Although some of these schools began to admit black pupils after 1990, informal white resistance, capacity limitations, and fees (often newly imposed with apparent exclusionary intent) generally have kept blacks out of historically white public schools. Private schools, many of which offer superior educational programs, remain largely inaccessible to most blacks because of the high cost. In an effort to rectify past inequalities, the government has pledged significant resources toward improving the physical and learning environment of the school system. To that end, the government implemented a new national curriculum in the early 21st century.

Literacy rates in South Africa are high by African standards. Since 1970, literacy rates have grown from one-half to four-fifths of the population.

Higher education

South Africa is home to many institutions of higher education. The oldest and largest of the universities is the University of South Africa (UNISA), which was established in Cape Town but is now based in Pretoria and offers correspondence courses in both English and Afrikaans. The oldest of the residential universities are those of Cape Town, Fort Hare, Stellenbosch, and the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg); of these, Stellenbosch began as an Afrikaans-language institution, while Fort Hare was originally established to serve blacks only. Other institutions in South Africa include the University of Pretoria, North-West University, the University of Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Historically, most blacks with postsecondary degrees earned them through UNISA or Fort Hare, but the English-language institutions—including the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg and Durban) and Rhodes University—admitted a few black students until 1959, when their ability to do so was restricted by apartheid legislation that they fiercely opposed. The government then established several new institutions (the Universities of the North, Zululand, Western Cape, Durban-Westville, and Vista and the Medical University) for various black groups and increased the number of black-oriented technikons, schools designed to teach technical industrial skills. The officially independent homelands of Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Venda also established their own universities.

Even after apartheid-era restrictions were removed, many postsecondary institutions remained influenced by their historically dominant racial and ethnic character. Coloured and Indian students were integrated into historically white universities more rapidly than blacks. Professional and postgraduate courses were still concentrated at the formerly white universities until an ambitious restructuring program was undertaken in the early 21st century. Under the government’s plan, several universities and technikons were consolidated in an effort to improve the access to and quality of education available to all students regardless of race, to eliminate duplication of services, and to better meet the country’s projected workforce requirements.